Yggdrasil Casinos

Few studios in this section built a reputation as fast as Yggdrasil. Founded in 2013, it needed only a few years to go from unknown newcomer to a name UK players recognise, and it got there on the quality of its games rather than the size of its catalogue. This page covers the casinos carrying its work — listed above — and then the work itself: the slots, the payout numbers, the mobile side and the company. One point settled up front: Yggdrasil's products carry the approval of gambling regulators, so the games are not the part that needs vetting. The casino holding your deposit is. Its licence is its own affair — nothing Yggdrasil confers — and looking it up on the Gambling Commission's register takes less time than reading one bonus clause.

Yggdrasil slots: a young catalogue built in HTML5

Slots are where the studio's effort goes — the specialisation that made its name — and every one of them runs on a proprietary HTML5 framework the studio wrote for itself. The practical payoff is rendering that holds up equally well on a desktop monitor and a phone screen. The historical payoff is that Yggdrasil never accumulated a Flash back-catalogue to drag around: within months of founding, management dropped Flash for HTML5, well before the wider industry accepted that the standard had changed.

The two games most players will know are Vikings Go Berzerk, the Norse-raid slot that became the studio's flagship, and Valley of the Gods, the Egyptian title that usually sits beside it on a lobby's Yggdrasil shelf.

Three from the catalogue we've actually played

Producing this page involved time on the reels, and three titles earned a mention by name. Trolls Bridge draws on Scandinavian mythology and plays better than its cartoon trolls suggest. Pumpkin Smash takes Halloween as its theme and surprised us with how good it looks. Spiña Colada drops the reels into a Caribbean beach holiday and commits to the mood completely. None of the three is the studio's most famous game; together they show its range.

Browse a partner casino's shelf and the themes run wider still: Ancient Rome, Irish folklore, Mexican wrestling, treasure hunts, classic fruit, the seabed. For a developer this young the spread is genuinely broad; whatever you tend to play, some corner of the catalogue probably covers it.

Tables and cards: what a Yggdrasil casino borrows

Yggdrasil develops games, not the platforms that host them, and its development effort goes into slots. The roulette, blackjack and baccarat at any casino in our list — classic versions and live-dealer ones, along with video poker and the smaller traditional games — are therefore supplied by other studios sharing the same lobby. An earlier version of this page wondered whether Yggdrasil would branch into tables itself one day; slots have remained the focus, and given how the studio has fared on them, it is hard to argue with the lane it picked. If tables are half your evening, the question to ask a casino isn't whether it stocks Yggdrasil — it's who else it stocks.

What the games pay back

On the figures partner casinos publish, Yggdrasil's games return between 94.45% and 98.24% of everything staked on them — a high band, comfortably in line with the wider market. The percentages come from the testing agency responsible for auditing the games' random number generator — the same independent oversight any casino serious about responsible gaming submits to. Different games sit at different points inside that band, so consult the published figure for the specific title you play. One caution about reading it: RTP is measured across millions of spins pooled together, and a single evening can finish anywhere.

Yggdrasil casinos on mobile

Every Yggdrasil game is an HTML5 game, which settles most of the mobile question before it is asked: the catalogue runs in the browser of any reasonably modern phone or tablet. Where a casino offers a downloadable app, it will be for Apple or Android devices — nobody builds for anything else — and an app written for its operating system does tend to run a touch smoother than the browser route. Owners of other devices lose nothing that matters: same games, same balance, and the browser was how this studio's work was designed to be delivered in the first place.

From NetEnt to Malta: the company

Yggdrasil was founded in 2013 by Fredrik Elmqvist, who left NetEnt to build a studio of his own — a pedigree that explains a certain amount about the polish of the early releases. The company is headquartered in Malta, but its bloodline is Swedish and so was its first market: Yggdrasil games were live on Swedish gambling platforms within the founding year. Recognition came quickly too. Among the studio's honours is the Innovator of the Year title at the International Gaming Awards — an award plenty of larger competitors would have liked for themselves, and one we thought it deserved.

The other thing worth knowing about the modern company is YG Masters, its publishing programme for partner studios: outside developers build games on Yggdrasil's technology and ship them through its distribution network. That is why some games carrying the Yggdrasil name in a lobby were made by smaller studios working under its wing.

Yggdrasil: Company information

• Company: Yggdrasil Gaming
• Founded: 2013, by Fredrik Elmqvist (formerly of NetEnt)
• Headquarters: Malta — Swedish roots, with its first games live on Swedish platforms in the founding year
• Technology: proprietary HTML5 framework across the catalogue; Flash abandoned within months of founding
• Known for: slots — Vikings Go Berzerk, Valley of the Gods, Trolls Bridge — plus the YG Masters partner-studio programme
• Awards: Innovator of the Year at the International Gaming Awards
• Regulation: products approved by gambling regulatory authorities; each casino hosting the games holds its own operator licence

Where we land on Yggdrasil

The original verdict on this page called Yggdrasil a young Scandinavian company headed for big things, and events have largely borne it out — the studio still rates among the better providers on the market. The case rests where it always did: on games with a clear innovative streak, built on technology the studio owns. The one reservation also still applies. Yggdrasil contributes nothing to the table-and-card side of a lobby, so players who split their time between reels and blackjack will be leaning on the operator's other suppliers. Mobile coverage comes as standard wherever the games are stocked, which leaves little for the studio's side to decide between one Yggdrasil casino and another. Put two of them side by side and the games cancel out; whatever separates them is the operator's doing, and weighing that is the job of the list at the top of this page.

18+ only. Decide the spend before you deposit and use the casino's limit-setting tools to make that decision stick. Nobody has to manage the harder moments alone, either: BeGambleAware and GamCare exist for exactly that conversation, at no cost and in confidence, and anyone who wants the choice taken out of their own hands can self-exclude through GamStop, which applies across GB-licensed gambling sites for as long as the exclusion runs.